savagebecker:
“Oh, no, not long at all,” he reassures her, as the waiter hands her a menu of her own and he opens his, glancing at the wine list on the first page.
It feels like a dozen things have changed, since the last time they did this, a dozen major pieces of his life shifting around, his landscape changing in ways it had gone essentially untouched for forty years, but this, at least, is familiar. Her smile, the fondness in her voice, the way she seems to transform, just a little, given the chance to dress up and indulge in the kind of luxury a restaurant like this affords. Cassandra, bright and bold and daring and determined, this incredible woman he’s watched grow over the years into the remarkable auror she is now.
Things have changed: everything with Camden, of course. Everything with Baron. Even the tense and silent truce he’d had with Benjamin since they ended up on the same Squad together has been shaken, a little, by their conversation in Scotland, by his own fear when he found out Camden and Benjamin were walking straight into a nest of vampires with one another and there was nothing he could to about it. The world has become an entirely new place, around him—not in a bad way, but just in a way that feels strange for someone whose life has been routine for so many years.
And the promotion to Lieutenant is a part of that, as well. It isn’t like her promotion, from Office to Corporal, largely a nominal gesture, in which she’ll have more authority and more responsibility but be doing the same kind of work, most of the time, on roughly the same level. There’s something about moving from the desk he’s occupied for so many years into an entirely new office, separate from the rest of the Squad, that makes it feel strange, not to mention it’s a promotion that means he’ll be in the field less, no more small cases that just need a set of hands to check something out or wrap something up. He’d been reluctant to make that move for a long time, but with the way he’s been feeling himself feel older lately, the way he’s felt just a little less sharp, it feels like the right move, to not be taking as many cases, to be doing other sorts of work when it needs to be done instead.
“Thank you. I have to say, I can’t decide whether I’m excited to be leaving my old desk behind or if I’m feeling strangely nostalgic for it, now that I’ve packed it all up. What do you think, should we get a bottle of champagne?”
Coming to places like this is always more than a little strange, but there’s a kind of glee in it that she’s always been able to indulge in when she does it with Becker. This is the kind of place her mother would love, where Cassandra might have been taken by any number of men who were vying for her hand in marriage. And it was somewhere she never would have gone on her own, not dressed up in the way she is now, as if that old life is something she takes part in all the time. Sometimes, here with Becker, it feels almost like a game. But it’s more a special treat than anything else, two people with something to celebrate and enough money to do it well.
It seems like her world is moving and changing so quickly. Several weeks ago, she was a Corporal and everything seemed steady. There was drama, and all the things she was used to, but she could never have foretold the way her world would have been rocked after the incident in Scotland. Now she had Abel, and she was a Sergeant, and there were suspicions about Becker Savage that kept running around in circles in her head. Sometimes she looked up at him, saw him walking across the room at work, and remembered standing next to Abel and gazing down at a tome that made it clear the world was a horrible place. Sometimes she remembered that, and then recalled her brothers strange obsessions with conquering death, achieving longevity, bringing people back from the brink of non-existence. A horcrux wasn’t quite necromancy, but it made her skin itch in exactly the same way. She really didn’t want to believe that Becker could have been capable of something like that. She didn’t want to believe that Abel’s accusations about this man who she loved like a father could be true.
He was like a father to her. He had done more for her, been kinder to her than her own father ever had. He’d believed in her when no one else did, so she saw it as her duty to believe in him in return. Loyalty, it was a concept that had been drilled in to her for a long time. Loyalty to her family, to their ideals. She had thrown those things away, but she’d given all of her loyalty to the new people in her life, the new people that she loved. Given it to Becker, given it to Athena, and given it to Abel. It was a delicate balancing act, but she hoped she didn’t have to let any of them down.
“You’ll at least get more peace and quiet, without all of us bothering you and filling up the room with noise. Things are so much more lively now that Everhart and McMahon have fallen back in to their double act.” She smiles, softly, and lets out a soft hum as she considers it. “I think we’d better. We’re celebrating, after all. What better excuse is there than that? Plus, I’ve been looking forward to this all day. Good food, good company.” A bright smile, she puts her menu down for a moment. So many good options. “I feel like we haven’t seen very much of each other, lately. Like we’re getting pulled in completely different directions by the universe itself.”